Abstract
BACKGROUND: Repairing soft tissue defects caused by inflammation, tumors, and trauma remains a major challenge for surgeons. Adipose tissue engineering (ATE) provides a promising way to solve this problem. METHODS: This review summarizes the current ATE strategies for soft tissue reconstruction, and introduces potential construction methods for ATE. RESULTS: Scaffold-based and scaffold-free strategies are the two main approaches in ATE. Although several of these methods have been effective clinically, both scaffold-based and scaffold-free strategies have limitations. The third strategy is a synergistic tissue engineering strategy and combines the advantages of scaffold-based and scaffold-free strategies. CONCLUSION: Personalized construction, stable survival of reconstructed tissues and functional recovery of organs are future goals of building tissue-engineered fat for ATE.